Love the sin and the SINNER

oskar is back.

Like, back back.

Alright, that might be an overexaggeration, or it might be an underexaggeration. He was absolutely bloody ridiculous as SINNERS coasted through the - inhales deeply - Perfect World Shanghai Major 2024 EU RMR Closed Qualifier A. Rolls off the tongue.

Here are some numbers for you:

…and a frankly mindblowing +69.2 damage difference per round. Every round, he averaged 69.2 more damage than he took!

For reference, 29 players at the event at the time of writing averaged less damage per round than that. Not damage difference, damage. The second-highest damage difference was 26.3.

oskar is back.

SINNERS were joined by Sangal, who 2-0’d BLEED. Sangal have been quietly levelling up and have a spot in Pro League next season, so they’re worth keeping an eye on. In the - inhales deeply - B Qualifier (gotcha!), SAW and Cloud9 went 3-0.

Nothing too surprising. In fact, this whole group is pretty by the numbers. BIG and OG are in 2-1, AMKAL are out 0-3 after their embarrassing showings against NIP (that weren’t even in this event but showed their level quite well) and Zero Tenacity also found their way out early.

However, hop back over to A, and you’ll see something very peculiar.

ENCE and TSM are both 1-2 - which isn’t that surprising until you realise they did it in an 0-2 game. TSM knocked out 1WIN (who themselves are surprising to be in the 0-2 bucket, never mind 0-3), and ENCE knocked out Enterprise in an 0-2 game.

This leaves both of them in the same range as Monte, B8, Rhyno and BC.Game, which means there’s still a good shot one of them goes out here, which would be very funny.

Both rounds 4 and 5 in both qualifiers will be done today, so keep your eyes on it. If you’ve got the day off, there’s your entertainment sorted. Our eyes are on Monte vs ENCE. Yummy.

Oh, and ohnePixel’s ‘DRILLAS’, POGGERZ, and a bunch of other funny names made it through in the Middle East. Look out for NOM vs Unlucky Much?, if you’re really, really bored.

Valve snap back

The Keyboard tomfoolery era has officially come to an end, taking some collateral with it. That was pretty quick for Valve.

Snap Tap, SOCD, Snappy Tappy, null binds, whatever you call it, it’s gone.

Valve went out of its way to ban them from the game, implementing a way to detect it. If you use one of these technologies to make yourself the movement god you’ve always wished you were, you’ll just simply get kicked. On Valve servers ofc, outside of those your mileage may vary.

Now, we did add null binds to that list up there, but they didn’t get banned like the keyboards did. No no, they’re a whole different can of worms…

All binds that contain more than one movement or attack function are now blocked by default through a cheat-protected command. If you didn’t understand a word of that, it means your jump-throw bind no longer works.

Valve’s rationale is that they’ve made jump throws consistent in CS2, so anyone should be able to throw them manually by pressing two buttons. Basically, they’re saying it’s a skill issue if you need jump-throw binds.

These changes are probably good for the game long-term, regardless of how you feel about them personally. Taking away avenues for people to express skills is bad, regardless of ho… wait, we’re not done? They did WHAT?

Hidden at the bottom of the patch notes is an announcement that VacNet 3.0 has started testing on a limited number of games.

For the uninitiated, VacNet is Valve’s attempt at an unintrusive anti-cheat. Their solution is to use machine vision and -learning plus other fancy words to teach computers what cheaters look like, so they can detect them automatically.

We don’t know much about 3.0 yet, but if you do have a game canceled by it and you think it did so incorrectly, Valve wants you to email them at: csgoteamfeedback@valvesoftware.com

Why G2 failed in Cologne

Logan debriefs Elliott who just returned home from IEM Cologne, plus preview both BLAST and the beginning of RMRs.

Also, don’t miss out on your two favorite podcast hosts… dancing?

‘El Assico’

The BLAST Premier Fall Showdown 2024 has kicked off, and it’s already delivered an absolute gem – for all the wrong reasons.

NiP was knocked out of the event after a 2-1 loss to AMKAL – who had their coach in the lineup – in what can only be described as one of the worst CS matches ever witnessed.

Warning: viewer discretion is advised – you may require medical attention after watching these clips.

We genuinely feel for the six NiP fans out there – you’re in some dark times. But hey, look on the bright side: it can’t get any worse than this, right?

In other less thrilling games, revamped OG surprised everyone by sweeping HEROIC out of the tournament, thanks to a standout performance from MoDo.

After vanishing in Cologne, FaZe finally tracked down broky, and the squad scraped through a win against Rare Atom. The AWPer topped the rating charts with a 1.26 performance.

God, we miss old FaZe.

In the other series over the last couple of days:

🏆 What a way to celebrate

🫰 Putting the snap in Snap Tap

🤷‍♂️ Messy but honest

This TL;DR was written by aizyesque, shoko, Horizzon and napz.
Welshy coded the email and Incipiens copy edited.

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